13 comments:

I did NOT see it coming & I can imagine the visceral glee you had as the DM when it was sprung on them. Also, the Players were cracking me up with quotes, from "BOOOORING, I want to kill the king!" to my favorite--

"He turned into like, four kings, she just happened to..."

"I HANDLED IT."

"I wanna light him on FIRE."

"She set the correct king on fire."

That is good old fashioned DUNGEON DELVING. I don't know if it is editorial, or if Justine is just clicking with the group or what, but it has really come together.

Well done with entrusting a plot twist to a new player, and well done by the new player for dropping it at just the right moment. In my own group, we've got a player who likes to come in with new characters with 'dark secrets' that everybody at the table ends up knowing after the first ten minutes of play, so it's good to see that other gamers have better impulse control then we do.

I'm hoping I haven't missed the discussion, but I'd like to see more about how you decide the best way to integrate a new player into your existing group. When I do it, I tend to fall afoul of one of two extremes:

1. Spending too much attention, both rules-wise and story-wise, on the newbie, boring and irritating the veteran players, or

2. Leaving the newbie hanging in the wind assuming the other players will step in to help out, only to find out that they'd rather focus on their own stuff.

(The latter got particularly weird in a session of d20 Star Wars I ran once, where I nearly gang-raped the newbie, who had just started dating one of the veterans. The relationship didn't last, and I don't think that experience helped.)

Ha! So, you planted the seed that Justine Jolie was an half-orc months ago. I had a moment where I wondered, "did I miss something?" when she was talking about taking off her mask. I Then realized that I had been fooled, same as your players. Right the fuck on.

I very much liked this episode. To me, this episode in particular really showed how engaged and into the adventure your players were. Satine's expressions at around 4:30 were a perfect example of example of it.